Anxiety: Stop Fighting It & Start Using It
- Vincent Infante
- Apr 20
- 4 min read
“All Emotion has Positive Intent, even your Anxiety.”
If you’re human, you’ve probably experienced some heavy negative emotions at one point or another in your life. However, I have a challenge for you, keep an open mind to what I’m about to say… There is no such thing as negative emotions. I know it may be hard to believe, but all emotions actually have a positive intent behind them. Though we may act a specific way, or get what we perceive as a negative outcome, the emotion is actually net neutral.
This was something that took me YEARS to learn, especially as someone who was diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder, and panic disorder. I would constantly spiral, life we seemingly out of control, I was anxious and I knew it, but I never knew what to do with that information.
There is nothing worse than being trapped within your own mind, with thoughts going miles a minute. It wasn't until many years later that I learned the truth about anxiety, it isn't a permanent pervasive disorder, it's usually actually ongoing because we never solve where it comes from, more importantly we don't challenge ourselves to do something different about it.
What if I told you that I was not only able to ditch my diagnosis but obliterate my chronic anxiety? Now don't get me wrong, I still experience anxiety, we all will and should, however I now have the tools and strategies to get out of it, quicker, more efficiently, solve it and resolve it. I'm going to give you a few of the same tools and information that helped me, so with that I'd like to invite you to...
Join me on this journey of challenging the way you see emotions
Join me on this journey of challenging the way you see emotions, and let’s see if we can create a quick breakthrough on this topic.
In life undoubtedly you’ll experience things like anger, depression, procrastination, anxiety, these are the core 4 “negative” emotions most people experience, so let’s go with just one of them for now and dissect anxiety. Now you may be wondering how can these emotions possibly have any type of positive intent behind them? Well these emotions are very interesting in how they try to help us.
Anxiety as a protection system
Anxiety for instance is an ancient protection system built within us, to warn us of an immediate threat in the environment. You may know this as activating the fight, flight, or freeze response.
This was super helpful when we shared the planet with saber tooth tigers and ran around naked with sticks in our hands (Because obviously most things could kill us).
Anxiety is one of the best ways to tap in & activate our sympathetic nervous system. This is basically what gives us some temporary superhuman abilities. It will pump our adrenaline, enhance blood flow, allow for more oxygen, and heightened response times.
This is the main positive intent behind anxiety, to get you into a state to take powerful action to overcome your immediate threat.
You can also learn more about the stress response from this article here:
Anxiety is actually here as a guide, the main reason most people tend to struggle with their anxiety for prolonged periods of time is because they are in a constant state of inaction, as well as being unaware that they are constantly in the fight, flight or freeze response.
Today’s version of a saber tooth tiger is more like, overwhelming debt coming due, or that jerk of a boss at the office, maybe it’s your nagging spouse, or your kid wanting too much from you. Whatever the situation is, we can perceive it as a threat and thus live in this heightened state.
Anxiety is an experience, it isn’t a part of you
So we know it’s supposed to be helpful, but we don’t know how to get to the point where we flip the script from adversity to advantage right? Well, let’s dive into that.
Learning to separate yourself (your internal identity) from your anxiety (which is a temporary experience/emotion) is a massive key. Anxiety is an experience, it isn’t a part of you. You don’t HAVE anxiety, you EXPERIENCE it.
As you learn to seperate the two, get curious. So many times we can be stuck in our anxious state, because we are SO CERTAIN of whatever it is that we are afraid of, but what if you decided to challenge your anxiety?
What if you asked yourself, “why am I currently having this experience, what about my current circumstance is bringing up this emotion?”
Sort through these questions until you find the answer, then promptly ask yourself to solve this problem with a follow up question “What action would be most helpful to take at this moment to help myself out of this situation?”
Take the action
Lastly and this is the MAJOR key, once you understand the action to take, commit to it and do it. If you cannot take an immediate action in the moment, do what's called a “delayed action” and plan it out accordingly with a time and day scheduled to make it happen.
We cannot change our circumstances if we are unwilling to change the way we view them, especially when it comes to anxiety. Anxiety has the capability to make us spiral, to stop the spiral is to take back control through challenge and change. Challenge the thought, change the trajectory of your actions.
Closing thoughts
I’m going to do more on how your “negative emotions are helpful, I’ve decided I’m going to create a little mini series for you. The goal is to help you shift your perspective one emotion at a time, and help you understand that there is no positive and negative, there is only perspective.
The real question is does your perspective help or hurt you? Does it enhance your quality of life or drag it down?
Let’s start shifting your perspective one step at a time! Also here’s an article I liked about a few more perspective shifts on how anxiety can actually be a supportive part of your life instead of a debilitating one!
Now let’s go out and challenge our daily anxiety so we can make the most out of our lives!
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